Informed by an interpretive framework of research, this study explores the challenges encountered by six Arab students enrolled at an English-medium American university in the UAE, who are all non-native speakers of English and share the common desire to develop fluent control of the academic literacy practices that will ensure their success in their undergraduate careers. In addition to exploring the nature of challenges the students encounter, the study also aims to illuminate the impact of going through these challenges and the role played by social context dynamics in the development of each participant’s identity. I used frequent in-depth interviews conducted regularly with each student participant throughout an entire academic year, document analysis, and interviews with the professors as the main methods of data collection for this study. The findings highlighted the importance of three factors in forming the students’ perspectives on the academic literacy requirements: the perceived significance of grades, weakness in reading and writing skills, and doubts about the contribution of these requirements to their general academic and professional development. Starting their academic journey with this perspective, the students faced a number of challenges such as lack of time, transition to English medium of instruction (EMI) at undergraduate level, adapting to the changing requirements of academic reading and writing practices across the curriculum, using the library and doing research, and building socio-academic relationships. They tried to cope with these challenges first through studying for extended periods of time, using several corner-cutting strategies, and finally consulting with knowledgeable others and developing assignment-specific study strategies. While going through these experiences did not change the students’ initial perspective on the academic literacy requirements, eventually they got better at responding to these requirements, though they continued to question their purpose. The findings also highlight the impact of the above mentioned experiences on the students’ construction of identity. Their declining academic standing and the difficulties they faced in building socio-academic relationships led the students to develop an identity of deficiency and incompetence, standing in contrast to their former view of self. This emerging identity was partly constructed by the real difficulties they faced and also reinforced by others in their new discourse community, directly or indirectly. Nonetheless, certain literacy practices that they could relate to and that supported their understanding and performance through pair/group work, regardless of the grades they received, helped many of the participants overcome this negative sense of self to some extent. However, the identity of deficiency and incompetence manifested itself throughout the whole study in the cases of two participants who were required to take a non-credit remedial course in spring. Finally, the analysis of the interviews with the professors highlighted the discrepancy between their expectations and students’ knowledge of the required academic literacy demands. It was also revealed that many of the professors were not fully aware of the struggles students go through to meet the expectations. These findings emphasize the significance of understanding the complex nature of challenges undergraduates face and the problem with a remedial approach. Based on the findings and their implications, it is suggested that an inclusive curriculum-integrated model of academic literacy instruction could help English-medium higher education institutions in the UAE to address students’ academic literacy development needs more effectively, thereby saving them from most of the challenges described earlier as well as the identity adjustments brought about by those challenges. Other recommendations include an increased emphasis on academic reading instruction, more effective reading and writing assignments, helping students build effective socio-academic relations and positive identities, enhancing communication and collaboration between English language/writing experts and academic staff in the disciplines, and eliminating non-credit, remedial course requirements for students who are on academic probation.

This study investigated the effects of planning on second-language written production with regard to proficiency level, and task type. The participants were 157 Korean learners of English as a foreign language attending a four-year university in Korea. They were asked to complete two different types of writing tasks (Expository writing task and Argumentative writing task) in different planned conditions (Individual Planned Condition and Collaborative Planned Condition) over a two-week period. In the Individual Planned Condition, learners were given 10 minutes for individual planning in the prestructured task sheet and then asked to write an essay for 30 minutes. In the Collaborative Planned Condition, learners were allowed to interact with a peer during planning and they required to independently complete an essay. Participants' written products were evaluated on five analytic measures covering the areas of Content, Organization, Language in Use, Grammar, and Mechanics. The results of MANOVA tests indicated that the planned condition had an impact on learners' written performance in both tasks. Individually considered, learners in the Collaborative Planned Condition were able to achieve significantly higher scores in all the analytic features in Task 1 (Expository writing task). In contrast, there were no significant mean differences between two conditions in Task 2 (Argumentative writing task). The results also indicated that proficiency had influenced learners' written performance in both tasks. The proficiency effect was consistently found throughout the analytic scores Task 1 and Task 2. However, the interaction between condition and proficiency was not found in the two tasks. The results of repeated measures for the effect of task type revealed that significant mean differences were only found in the Mechanics section. It is concluded that Korean EFL learners' written performance was affected by planned condition and proficiency, but to only a small degree by the nature of task type with regard to the five analytic features. The findings of this study help broaden the understanding of second language learners' cognitive writing process involving planning. In addition, the results have pedagogical implications as well as theoretical implications in second language writing and relevance to second language writing assessment.

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With an increase of Swedish upper-secondary students’ motivation to enrol in university studies (Statistics Sweden, 2020a, 2020b), teachers must ensure that learners are adequately equipped to meet the expectations of higher education. However, in a national report, Skolinspektionen (2015) states many students fail to meet the standards of academic writing when undertaking the diploma project. To ensure learners become eligible for graduation and prepared for university studies, teachers need to be able to instruct pupils and to design effective scaffolding for diploma project writing. Therefore, the following study investigates the applicability of a genre-based model as atool for analysing relevant student-produced researchers papers written by EFL students, and to what extent the same genre-pedagogical analytical framework may be suitable as a tool for helping teachers to develop scaffolding for diploma projects written in English (and other languages). To address questions, a direct content analysis employing John Swales’ CARS model (1990) of rhetorical moves as a conceptual framework as a point of departure was performed on six EFL teacher-student research papers from the English and Education program for upper-secondary teachers of English at Malmö university. The analysis demonstrated that while several moves were executed in the pre-service teachers’ papers, some moves were absent. Additionally, several unconventional moves were identified, which can be attributed to the specific genres of the independent and degree projects. Hence, Swales’ CARS model is applicable for analysing student-produced research papers following the IMRAD structure. However, further investigation is encouraged into the genre-specific features of the student papers and the subsequent adaptation of the model to reflect the student-paper genre more closely. Consequently, to employ the model for designing scaffolding for diploma projects, teachers need to develop a critical understanding of moves employed within and across disciplines and teach them explicitly as part of pupils’ training and assessment in the writing process. Finally, further research targeting how teachers design and implement explicit genre-based writing scaffolding is called for.

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